


Public Displays

by bitboozy



Series: Domesticated [20]
Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Alec and Ellie finally get called out on their shit bahaha, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Office Romance, PDA, Romance, jealous!alec
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 09:02:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20598185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitboozy/pseuds/bitboozy
Summary: Alec and Ellie get into trouble at work for their excessive public displays of affection.





	Public Displays

Very few people would have believed that it would be possible for Alec Hardy and Ellie Miller to become any closer than they already have been. In the less than six months they’ve been truly together, they’ve been inseparable, attached physically at almost all times, and impossibly connected. Ellie’s sister Lucy can hardly stand it, she finds their inability to keep their hands off one another to be positively ghastly, and their children are annoyed by them day in and day out. 

But in the week since they told her family and closest friend about her pregnancy, since committing definitively that they would never get married but vowing that if their feelings about the institution of marriage ever changed they would marry the absolute _fuck_ out of each other…it has somehow happened that they’ve been drawn closer than ever before. Alec is even more handsy than he was, Ellie is even more affectionate. At work he can’t take his eyes off her, and she sends him soppy text messages from ten feet away. Sometimes she’ll text him **I love you_, _**and he’ll respond: **Who is this? **Just so he can watch her giggle through his office window.

Midway through the week he takes her to the beach after work and they walk along the water hand in hand for over thirty minutes without saying a single thing. The following day they end up staying late at work because they can’t keep from snogging in the break room, feeling like they in fact have more privacy after hours at work than they do at home. It was just yesterday that Katie Harford walked into his office and found them both on the couch, sitting at opposite ends stretched out across it lengthwise, their legs casually tangled together as they reviewed case files. Later that day he was so distracted just watching her put together an evidence wall that he completely missed the chair he was aiming to sit in and hit the ground instead.

On this particular morning, Jenkinson calls them into her office early, knowing they’ll be fifteen minutes late. (They are.) They sit in the two chairs opposite her desk and Jenkinson wonders if Alec _really _thinks she won’t notice him surreptitiously reaching out to place a hand on Ellie’s knee. Ellie apparently thinks so too because she doesn’t react, just focuses on her boss.

“Something wrong?” Ellie asks her, leaning forward and bracing herself.

Jenkinson leans back in her chair and clasps her hands together, observing them carefully. Making them sweat, if she’s being honest. She waits for the two of them to exchange nervous glances, which she knew they would, before she finally speaks.

“When you two came forward with your relationship – I’ll say ‘came forward’ despite the impromptu nature of your confession – I had full confidence that your new _circumstances _would not impact your work. And for a while, that appeared to be the case, though the occasional showing of affection was to be expected. I thought, if anything, it will only get better the longer they’re together, the more they…_get used _to being together. _Now_, however…I’m not sure _how _this came to be true, but the fact is you have instead gotten _worse _with time.”

Ellie makes a face through gritted teeth and Alec sits back in his chair, arms folded across his chest uncomfortably.

“Of course, I am very pleased for you both, how thrilling it is to see the blossom of new love, and so on and so forth, on and on. However. Though I’m not convinced that _your _work has suffered as a result of your…enhanced attachment, I _am _quite certain that the work of those around you has.”

Alec regards her skeptically. “Not sure how we can be held responsible for the performance of others.”

Ellie scowls at his impertinence and Jenkinson raises an eyebrow in response. “You’re not, are you? Well perhaps you remain blissfully unaware of just how _distracting_ it can be to work in the presence of two people in love. In particular when you yourself are not.”

Both Alec and Ellie frown, and Jenkinson can tell they are mentally going through what they know of the personal lives of all their colleagues. This could be a long process, so Jenkinson interrupts their thoughts.

“A whopping six people in CID are single, seven are divorced, and there is undoubtedly at least one in a very unhappy marriage,” she surmises.

“_Seven _are divorced?” Ellie asks, with surprise.

Alec sits up. “Are you countin’ _us_?”

“No, I am not counting you, so…nine, apparently.”

Ellie cringes. “Blimey." 

“All of this to say, both your colleagues and your subordinates have become somewhat uncomfortable with your public displays of affection and – “

Ellie sits up now too. “You’re not about to sack us, are you? Because – “ 

“Ellie,” Alec says firmly. She purses her lips and quiets herself.

“I am not about to _sack you_,” Jenkinson replies evenly. “But I might ask you to take some time to consider why it is that your conduct at work has worsened – “

“Bit harsh,” Alec says, wincing.

“Rather than evening out with time,” she finishes. “And then, to put it quite plainly, I’d like you to _knock it off_.”

Alec and Ellie are properly chastised, and too frightened to look at each other for comfort.

“Any questions?”

Ellie shifts a bit and Alec can tell without looking at her that she’s going to say something he won’t like.

“No, but – “ She looks at Alec briefly. “If I may. Ma’am. I might be able to account for the, um…for the…uh, _worsening_.”

Alec looks at her with dread. He has not been looking forward to this day, and did not have time to brace himself accordingly.

“I’m listening,” Jenkinson says.

“Um.” She looks at Alec. “Sorry.” Then back at Jenkinson. “I’m pregnant.”

Even the very impervious Jenkinson cannot hide her astonishent. Or her consternation. “Oh, good christ,” she whispers under her breath.

“Yes. Sorry. So.” Ellie wrings her hands together anxiously. “So I think it’s possible we’ve been a bit…overwhelmed by the news and it’s made us quite…overly attached to one another. Bit like a goofy little honeymoon phase only…without all that. Been a bit…googly-eyed over him lately, I reckon.” 

The look on Alec’s face is clearly begging her to _stop talking_.

But she doesn’t. “His fault for bein’ all lush and tidy like he is, can’t help being totally up for it, really, when he – “

Jenkinson clears her throat.

“Right, sorry.” Ellie shrinks back into her chair.

“You’ve made your point, DS Miller.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Jenkinson takes a deep breath and returns to her very even-keeled self. “Thank you for telling me. I imagine you were waiting until the recommended reveal date had passed and that’s why you’d not yet told me.”

“Yes, ma’am. ‘m only nine weeks yet. Twelve is the recommended – “ 

“I see.”

Ellie glances over at Alec, who is being no help at all. She glares at him. He sighs and sits up straight. “Yes, um. What – what DS Miller said.”

“_Thank _you,” Ellie says to him with a roll of her eyes. “Really thanks so much.”

“Well what do you _want _me to – “

“All right,” Jenkinson says, quieting them both. “I can see why this turn of events might have made it more difficult for you to be…well-behaved at every hour, though now that I’ve brought the matter to your attention I trust you will address the issue accordingly.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they both say at once.

“I’ll leave you to it then.” She starts gathering some papers on her desk, signaling that she’s ready to get back to work. “And Miller, we’ll speak again soon about the dates of your impending maternity leave.”

Ellie nods, then both she and Alec stand and see themselves out. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Once outside her office, they close the door and turn to each other in the hallway. On rather, turn _on _each other.

“_Your _fault,” they both accuse each other at once, and they are both wildly insulted in equal measure.

“_Me_?” Alec scoffs. “Insatiable Ellie with her _hormones_…”

“Oh, no, no no, that’s not what she means,” Ellie counters, pointing at him accusatorily. “We’re very discreet with our--- _you know, _in your office. It’s all the _touching _and the _mooning _over each other in the bullpen and in the hall, the snogging in the bloody break room.”

Alec places his hands on his hips as if he’s about to argue with her but he has nothing to say.

So Ellie continues. “You can’t come out and loiter ‘round my desk anymore, just…doing all the things you do with your…hands and your face.”

He looks at her dubiously. “_My _hands and _my _face? That’s rich when you’ve got your…you know, your bloody lipsticks on and your _eyes_ bein’ all sparkly and doe-like and your sodding see-through blouses and – “

“I haven’t got any see-through blouses!” She exclaims. “_You’ve _just got an overactive imagination!”

“Well so I have!” He exclaims back.

They quickly realize that if there’s not a change of subject soon they’re going to jump each other right there in the hallway. They both take a step backward from the other and look away sheepishly.

“Yeah, do see the problem.” He looks at his shoes.

She turns to the side. “Right, that’s, um, I can see why this would be…” 

“Inconvenient, yeah, for everyone,” he agrees.

“Yeah, bit distracting.” 

They both stand awkwardly, unsure of what to do with themselves. Then Ellie allows to herself to half-look at him.

“You think my eyes are sparkly?”

He glances up through the hair that’s fallen over his face. “I mean…yeah. Quite sparkly, they are, just a bit.”

They’re suddenly like two teenagers who’ve just admitted they have a crush. They both smile at each other, then immediately look away.

Jenkinson’s office door flies open and she’s glaring at them. “What’re you two doing?”

“I swear to god, I haven’t touched her,” Alec says quickly, like a reflex.

Ellie holds her hands up to confirm this. “Just talking. Promise.”

Jenkinson sighs dramatically. “Back to work now, will you? And maybe stay out of each other’s way the rest of the day.”

“…Yes, ma’am,” they both tentatively agree.

Jenkinson disappears back into her office. Ellie and Alec don’t look at each other.

“I’ll just…” Ellie gestures in one direction.

“Yeah, me too.” He gestures in the other.

Then they both walk off down opposite ends of the hallway.

They do their best to spend as much time apart as possible throughout the day. They do their casework separately, eat lunch on their own, and never follow each other into the break room. It is a very, very long day.

At 5:00, Alec watches Ellie gather her things and leave the building. They never go home this early, but now that they’re avoiding each other at work, they have more incentive to _leave. _He grabs his coat and follows her out at a distance. She’s standing against the car waiting for him when it makes it outside. Once he’s within a few feet of her, they fly to each other like magnets. He kisses her first, then just pulls her against his chest and holds her to him. 

“Bloody hell,” he comments, kissing her hair.

“Why on earth was that so _hard_?” Ellie asks dubiously. “Most couples _don’t _work together and they somehow manage to get through the bloody day.”

“Just not used to it,” Alec replies, and she pulls back to look at him. “Probably we shouldn’t have gone cold turkey like that. Have to ease ourselves back into Hardy & Miller.”

“But we’re _not _Hardy & Miller.” She’s frowning. “Not anymore. We’re…partners and co-parents and roommates and, you know…”

“Shag buddies.”

“Shag buddies, of course. Not sure we can _go_ back.”

“To be fair I don’t think that’s what Jenkinson’s askin’. Reckon she just wants us to be better at keeping our hands to ourselves,” Alec says. “Quite the Herculean task, apparently.”

She sighs, feeling a bit flummoxed by the whole thing. He opens the car door for her. “Come on, home then.”

At home, he cooks dinner and she sits at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. They tell each other about their respective days, something they’ve never had to do before as long as they’ve known each other, while kids wander in and out.

Halfway through dinner, Daisy asks to be excused early, and Tom lets it slip that she’s going to meet up with her boyfriend Colin. Alec’s entire body goes cold and it’s only the stern look on Ellie’s face that persuades him to acquiesce. He can hardly speak, so Ellie tells her to be home by ten, it’s a school night. Daisy agrees.

Ellie watches a film with Tom and Fred while Alec insists on working. She accuses him of feeling like he has to overcompensate after their meeting with Jenkinson today. He doesn’t argue. She’s nonchalant about it. “Now she knows I’m pregnant, she can’t sack me anyhow,” she says. “I could have her in court for everything the crown’s worth.”

On the couch, Fred falls asleep on top of Ellie, and then Ellie falls asleep. Alec ends up abandoning his work and finishing the film with Tom. When it ends, Alec extricates Fred from Ellie and brings the child upstairs to bed. Tom retires to do schoolwork, one hopes. Alec returns to the couch and lets Ellie sleep while he watches _The Handmaid’s Tale_. Daisy returns home at 10:02, and he offers her a sternly raised eyebrow as she sheepishly heads upstairs to bed without a word. He somehow manages to rouse a sleeping Ellie and helps her upstairs. She’s fully down for the count, so he carefully divests her of her clothing, puts her in a t-shirt, and then tucks her into bed. He reads with his bedside lamp on for another thirty minutes, then switches it off and goes to sleep.

In the morning, early, they’re not sure who even initiates it, but they’re both still half asleep when he’s inside her, slowly thrusting with his head buried in her neck.

Ellie sighs happily, eyes closed, running a hand up and down his back. “Dreamt you were shaggin’ me on the floor next to your desk.”

He groans and thrusts into her harder at that, once or twice, then back to his slow rhythm. He lifts his head to kiss her softly, several times in a row, in time with his thrusts.

“Maybe this is what we should do,” he says, gazing down at her.

“…Are you going to try to have a conversation right now?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine.”

He compensates by massaging her breast as he speaks. “Maybe we should just shag in the mornings, get it out of our systems and we’ll be behaved all day at work.” 

“Hmm.” She slips both hands underneath his t-shirt. “Sounds quite nice.”

“Mmhmm.” He starts kissing her neck.

“Bit unrealistic though, all things considered.” Her hands then wander down to his arse and give it a squeeze. He begins thrusting into her a bit harder.

“Set an alarm, get up early…”

“I worry that’s not how it works though, love,” she argues, gasping a little when he pinches a nipple. “How many times’ve we shagged in the morning only to get caught snogging at least once by lunchtime?”

He makes a guilty face. “Too many times.”

“Right. So.”

“Frankly I think I work better after a good snoggin’,” he tells her.

“Well, of course, as do I, but we can’t expect anyone else to work better after they _catch _us snogging.”

He sits up a bit, raising her hips with him to get a slightly deeper angle. “All right?”

“Yeah,” she replies casually. “And anyway sometimes a morning shag only leaves me all moony, dripping with pheromones, and I want to jump you throughout the day even _more_.”

“Right. Well.” He grips her thighs and begins quickening his pace a little. “It was just a thought.”

She tightens her thighs around him, hooking her ankles at the small of his back. “Right, will you stop talking then? I’d like to achieve orgasm before breakfast.”

**

Halfway through the morning, Katie Harford follows Ellie into the break room.

“It wasn’t me,” Katie says urgently.

Ellie has just turned on the kettle. “What wasn’t?”

“Who complained, it wasn’t me who complained about you and Hardy.”

Ellie raises both eyebrows as she grabs a teabag. “…Didn’t think it was.”

“I just.” She takes a deep breath. “I know I’m the one always…walking in on you in intimate moments and I didn’t want you to think it was me.”

“If it wasn’t you, how do you know a complaint was _made_?” Ellie questions her.

Katie looks away from her. “Because he told us.”

“Who?”

“Brian. In SOCO.”

“_Brian _complained about us?” Ellie is astonished.

Katie shifts a bit uncomfortably. “Reckon he’s got a thing for you. Nish says it’s been a going on for awhile.”

Ellie clasps her hands together with satisfaction and is grinning, to Katie’s befuddlement. “Oh, this is too good,” she replies. “This is too, too good.”

“The rest of us…no one’s put out by it, Ellie,” Katie insists. “I mean no one wants to catch you two shagging on top of his desk or anything, but…we’re not bothered. Hardy’s a lot nicer now he’s with you, anyhow. No one wants to see the old Hardy back.”

Within five minutes, Ellie is in Alec’s office, the door closed. He looks up from the papers on his desk and she’s grinning with great amusement. 

“It was _Brian_.” He just frowns at her, totally lost. “Who complained about us. It was _Dirty Brian_.”

“You’re kidding!” Alec exclaims, standing up and walking around to meet her on the other side of his desk. “_Dirty Brian _went to Jenkinson?”

“Katie says it’s because he fancies me still,” Ellie announces proudly. 

“_What_?”

“You heard me.”

“Why on earth are you _smilin’_?” Alec is horrified.

Ellie shrugs. “Always nice when someone has a crush on you, isn’t it.”

“_No_.”

“Especially after they’ve turned you down in the past,” she adds.

“You turned him down first,” he reminds her.

“I was _married_.”

Alec puts his hands on his hips. “So you’d have said yes otherwise?”

Ellie rolls her eyes. “Well, I dunno, do I?”

He suddenly heads for the door. “I’m gonna speak to him.”

She grabs onto his jacket. “Alec, you can’t, if Jenkinson finds out – “

“Don’t care if she does.”

She holds his gaze sternly. “Do not embarrass me. Do you hear?”

Alec grumbles something unintelligible and exits his office.

*

Alec is waiting at Brian’s desk when he comes in.

“DI Hardy.” Brian smiles congenially, but skeptically. “Something you need?” 

“Ellie’s spoken for.”

Brian frowns. “…Yeah, thanks for update.”

“I know it was you,” he says, standing tall with his hands in his pockets. “She does too.”

“Me what?”

“Who filed a complaint with Jenkinson,” Alec explains tersely. “About us.”

Brian sighs. “Look, I’m not the only one who finds it distractin’. You can do whatever like at home, but – “

Alec shakes his head. “It’s only distractin’ if you let it distract you. Which you are doin’ cause you’re carryin’ a torch for Ellie.”

Brian shakes his head. “Ellie’s a friend.”

“Ellie’s _pregnant_. Brian. So you just go on and keep to yourself, eh?”

Brian’s jaw drops. “You’re joking.”

“I never joke.”

Brian sits down on the edge of his desk. “Blimey.”

“And you should consider that privileged information. If I hear it from _anyone _and I mean _anyone _in this department I will hang you out by the balls,” Alec says firmly. “Is that understood?”

“…Yes, sir.”

Alec turns on his heel and stalks down the hallway.

Once he’s nearly out of sight, under his breath, Brian whispers, “Shitface.”

Ellie is sitting on Alec’s desk when he comes walking briskly back in. She stands.

“We’ll not have any more problems." 

“…Because you _killed _him? What did you do?”

“Put him in his place.”

She rubs her temples. “Oh god, don’t tell me.”

“Fine.” He goes back behind his desk.

“I mean it, don’t tell me.”

“I _won_’t then.” He sits down in his chair. “’m not goin’ to filter myself around you, Ellie. Not goin’ to edit myself or…anythin’ like that. I have great respect for everyone we work with, believe it or not, and I’m bloody good at my job and intend to remain so but you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me and if I want to kiss you, I’m goin’ to kiss you. Whenever I bloody well want to.”

He begins chaotically tossing papers around on his desk unsure how to channel his frustration. Ellie takes a step forward and leans on the edge of it.

“Is that so?”

“Fuckin’ right it is.”

She leans forward. “And what about when _I _want to kiss _you_?”

He slams a file down onto his desk, not looking at her. “Then you should sure as shite feel free to do so!” He’s nearly shouting now.

She smiles. “Alec.” She waits for him to look at her. When he finally does, she reaches out and draws him forward by the chin, then kisses him softly. “You through havin’ a row with yourself?”

“…Yeah. Think so.”

“Good.” She kisses him again, then pats his cheek. “Now get back to work.”

She grabs a file off his desk, then turns her back on him. “You should eat something. You’re cranky.” And she walks out of his office.

He groans, then opens the small desk drawer she long ago filled with snacks for him. And maybe for herself. He pulls out a granola bar, unwraps it, and bites off the top.

His phone rings, and when he picks it up, he hears her voice. “Maybe more than one.”

He sighs and hangs up the phone.

**

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to Olivia Colman and her husband for the "I love you/Who is this" bit. It makes me laugh every time I think about it which is way too much.


End file.
